UFC – Spicier Blend Hot Sauce

UFC Hot Sauce, not to be confused with Poirier’s Louisiana Style Hot Sauce made by the former UFC star, is a brand of hot sauce from the Philippines.

Whenever I travel internationally I like to visit a supermarket and see what the local products available are, including hot sauces. On a trip to the Philippines I did just that, and was saddened to discover there is very little of any hot sauce culture there. However I was able to find a few bottles, and as this sauce seems to be one of the most popular, decided to give it a go first.

UFC is a brand of NutriAsia a large Philippine food conglomerate that got their start back in the ’50s making Banana Ketchup. Perhaps fittingly, this sauce also contains quite a bit of sweetness. Though it looks like a traditional Louisiana style sauce, and the bottle shape and general color of the sauce reinforce that, this sauce does contain a high percentage of sugar and isn’t vinegar-forward, which changes the flavor profile considerably.

On the first taste I was left a little bit perplexed, it doesn’t taste like any sauce I’ve had before. The flavor comes across as a blend of a typical sweet Asian chili sauce mixed with a Louisiana style sauce. There’s big sweetness at the front, and the chile flavor seems to blend Thai style chiles as well as cayenne. There are also some spices present which shift the flavor in the Asian direction. Also unique to this sauce is a warning on the bottle “Do Not Refrigerate” which I can’t recall seeing on a sauce before.

I found the flavor profile can go well with western foods, and it works on tacos as well as in soup. The real place where this shines is on Asian food, especially fried foods that are a little bit heavier. On egg rolls or sweet and sour chicken the flavors blend beautifully. It’s not as garlicky as a Sriracha, and has more of a vinegar note, which is good for cutting through fattier foods.

If you happen to see this it’s worth checking out just because Filipino hot sauces are rare in the USA, and the flavor profile is rather unique.

Ingredients: Water, Sugar, Chili, Iodized Salt, Modified Starch as stabilizer, Spices, Vinegar, Xanthan Gum as thickener, Sodium Benzoate as preservative, and Artificial Colors with Tartrazine.

Heat Level: 1/10. This is about on par with Frank’s, Crystal, etc, in heat.